Why Guys Should Try a Vegetarian Diet

Here’s Why Every Guy Should Go Vegetarian (At Least for a Month)

It’s well-known in the manliest circles that plants — you know, those frail and flimsy green things that grow out of the ground — don’t belong in a real man’s diet. Real men eat meat — preferably red meat — and tough, starchy carbohydrates. For real men, “fries or salad” isn’t a question so much as a subtle diss; leafy greens are rabbit food; the culinary province of wimps and losers, and eating a meal entirely without meat? Unthinkable. If no blood was shed for your meal, are you even really eating?

At least, that’s the mentality for many men in much of Western society, and it’s a mentality that’s hyper-prevalent in America. (It’s even a TV trope!) But aligning what we eat with narrow, finicky notions of what men can and can’t do is trickier than it might seem — and it can have consequences. For starters, diets high in red and processed meats are deeply unhealthy for those consuming them. And then there’s the massive impact on the environment that meat-heavy diets have, too.

Yep, as much as you love your steaks, ribs, burgers, chicken wings and the like, eating meat at every meal (or close to it) is not only expensive and unhealthy for you, it’s also coming at a steep cost for the planet — in a number of different ways.

Producing enough meat to feed the prodigious modern appetite for flesh requires great pastures being cut into the world’s forests; replacing trees (which convert carbon dioxide to oxygen) with, say, cattle (which fart and burp out enormous quantities of methane), has a doubly negative effect on the composition of the atmosphere.

And that’s to say nothing of the ecological tragedy of replacing thriving, biodiverse forests and jungles with the monoculture of acre after acre of bovine grass-chomping.

Experts have been linking factory farming, especially beef production, to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming for decades; by now, few in the scientific community dispute the important impact of the Western diet’s meat obsession on the health of the planet’s climate. Seriously — Americans eat four times as much beef as the global average, hence why many are even urging us to cut meat out altogether. Yet, like our dependence on fossil fuels, our urge to consume large quantities of meat continues unabated — and men are often the biggest culprits.

According to a 2016 U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, men eat 57 percent more meat, on average, than women. Meaning for every five portions of meat a woman eats, the guy next to her is eating eight. In the aggregate, that adds up to a massive difference between male and female diets that has sizeable impacts on the global food industry — and, as a result, the environment. Men’s obsession with chomping manly chunks of meat all the time is impacting the health of the planet every single day.

Which raises the question — why do men eat so much of it?

At the very least, most people probably know that meat isn’t something you can eat to the exclusion of all else. A meat-only diet, beyond having a nightmarish impact on your digestion, would likely lead to contracting scurvy and other severe vitamin deficiencies. But few trace that line along to its conclusion, which is: Meat isn’t actually all that great for you.

Yes, it’s an important source of protein. Yes, it provides you with a variety of amino acids. Yes, it builds muscle and bone. Yes, it’s important to the diet of children and people over 70. If you’re neither a child nor a senior citizen, however, it does have a lot of drawbacks. It’s been found in studies to increase your risk of developing a host of conditions, including heart diseases, colon cancer and type 2 diabetes. And, you can get all the benefits of meat from eating a balanced diet of fruits, vegetables and grains — which don’t put you at risk for heart conditions, cancer or diabetes.

All this goes without mentioning that meals built around meat (a fast food burger, for instance, or a giant plate of ribs) are also often pretty low in general nutritional value, and that processed meats like cold cuts and beef jerky are usually sky-high in sodium.

The fact is that men are eating more meat than their bodies need, and our culture is a big reason why. Meat has been associated primarily with men rather than women since humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies that divided tasks along gender lines — likely because men’s size and strength made them the more logical choice to handle bringing down big game.

But in modern times, the factors that tied men to meat have largely dissipated. Most of us don’t have to chase water buffalo for survival, for instance. Luckily, replacing the proteins we might get from meat with other sources is as simple as choosing one option over another from a menu.

What we do need is a healthy, balanced diet that’ll enable us to survive into old age, and eating our fill of meat every night is working directly against that. Little by little, we’re eating ourselves to death because it makes us feel tough.

Some may perceive going meatless as weak. The irony there — as pointed out by Carol J. Adams, author of “The Sexual Politics of Meat,” — is that men are over-indulging in this unhealthy, meat-heavy diet that’s supposed to signify toughness in part “because [they’re] too afraid to change in front of other men.”

The end result of this quest for image and status can influence deeply negative behaviours,, and to a lesser extent, even make you feel pressured about to what you’re ordering for dinner or where you’re eating on boys’ night out. To those who argue that meat simply tastes better, that’s valid. But it’s worth noting that well-seasoned meat alternatives can taste great, too.

So if you’ve ever made a joke about vegans or vegetarians — and realistically, it seems like most guys have — you almost owe it to yourself to try cutting meat out of your diet, just to see what it is that you’re actually trash-talking. With more and more places offering affordable vegetarian options, it’s easier than ever to swap in a surprisingly meat-likeveggie burger here and there, or to sample vegan pulled pork made from jackfruit.

Even if you don’t stick with it, being able to cut down on meat and replace it with alternatives that are healthier both for yourself and for the planet could change the way you think about eating, and make you realise how your actions impact the world.

Give it a shot – try replacing one or two meat-based meals a week with veggie alternatives,and have discussions about your progress to spark positive changes throughout your social circle. You might get teased at first, but you also might start a dietary ripple effect that benefits not only your buddies, but the planet as a whole.

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